Monuments have long been a fundamental part of human society, both in the large scale as well as the small. In today's society, monuments may be created to represent an event relevant to a geological region, or to commemorate the life or achievements of a person or group. In ancient society, monuments were also constructed to track astronomical movements, including tracking the stars and solar patterns. Evidence of this can be seen, for example, in various stone placements throughout England (such as Stonehenge, Kintraw, and the Cultoon stone circle in Islay). The placement of each sites' stone structures lines up with a solar phase as the rotation of the Earth and the seasons change. Monuments of this nature are large and only convey a small amount of astronomical information.
Structures that illustrate the alignment of the sun exist in the old world and the new, as evidenced by the sun's alignment with city planning of New York City. The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 laid out a city grid that aligned the city streets in such a way that twice during the year the sun will rise and set in alignment with east-west streets. This phenomenon is not limited to New York City, but can be found in cities throughout the world when a uniform street grid has been incorporated into the city planning. While natural demonstrations of this nature are fascinating to the public, they are also limited in their educational scope.
Planetariums offer educational representations of the solar system and the sun, but a planetarium is an enclosed environment. A planetarium is limited by the space encapsulated by the dome of the building and the quality of the projection system. This educational experience is unable to fully realize the vast scale of the solar system. The projector system's ultimate objective is to provide an accurate relative understanding of motion witnessed in the sky at night. There are limitations as the planetariums range in size from small inflatable domes to 20-meter plus permanent structures with fixed seating. Visitors may gain the benefit of seeing the entire solar system and the night sky but true scale of the universe can be lost by the visitor because of the size of the building.
Thus, there are shortcomings in both a monument of grand scale, offering only limited information and planetariums with limited personal scale. In addition, there is a need to have a truly representative scale in an educational monument, one that expresses more than just a visual representation but also a spatial one. The disclosed technology addresses this need.